It’s A Small Business World, After All!
In the 20 years of publishing Biz X magazine, I have always done my best to help other Windsor Essex businesses by offering editorial content to promote companies, organizations and events whenever possible. We have also kept our advertising rates extremely affordable. (In fact they have remained unchanged since 2001). Together we can help each other I believe.
That is why we have always made small businesses our #1 priority and enjoy a great relationship with the Small Business Centre as you will read in the accompanying letter I received from Sabrina DeMarco, their Executive Director.
Whenever we can help local businesses make more money — well it’s that much easier for us as a business magazine to flourish too.
It seems lately that everyone feels things are looking up!
“Economic Development Week In Windsor-Essex” (March 27 to 31, 2017) was the result of a collaboration among the Windsor Essex Economic Development Corporation, WorkForce WindsorEssex, WEtech Alliance, the Ministry of Economic Development and Growth, the City of Windsor, the Municipality of Leamington, the Towns of Amherstburg, Essex, Kingsville, Lakeshore, LaSalle and Tecumseh as well as Pelee Island.
Over 200 companies participated in a survey conducted by these organizations and the partners had an opportunity to reach out into the business community and meet with 100 companies in person.
A few of the results can be summed up in the quotes here . . .- “The City of Windsor is booming right now, of the businesses surveyed, we now know almost 60% of these companies are planning to expand within the next 18 months,” says Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens. “This is consistent with the Conference Board of Canada’s Outlook report for the Windsor Census Metropolitan Area as the second fastest growing economy in all of Canada for 2017.”
- “The results of the survey are encouraging, with participating businesses hiring over 4,500 people in the last year,” comments Katie Renaud, Research Associate at Workforce WindsorEssex. “As ‘workforce skills shortage’ was identified as the top barrier to growth in Windsor Essex, we will continue to work to improve the availability and stability of the workforce in our region.”
- “We are very pleased with the overall survey results, particularly that 53% of the businesses surveyed reported that the outlook for their industry is growing and over one third indicated that exporting to international markets was of interest to them in the future,” adds Stephen MacKenzie, CEO for the WindsorEssex Economic Development Corp.
The data collected will help the city, county and region identify specific issues and challenges faced by Windsor Essex companies. Understanding the needs of local businesses will give us all a competitive advantage and keep us journeying down the road to profitability and growth. And I’m all for that!
